NEW MAPS OF NATIONAL ABSENCE

 

by Jasmine Dreame Wagner

 

 

 

 

You know the laity

& priesthood of wasps; you know the penguin credo: the elite

 

still swarm

@ 40000 feet, I’m telling you, ((like Shakespeare,))

 

she kept the baby.

She borrowed her momma’s jacket for art.

 

She’s wearing the shirt with the alligator logo

& Angel #1 is leading

 

her to the edge

of the massive cantilevered roof

 

where bongo typefaces scream

of twin boundaries and 3-dimensional pinning

 

& I’m telling you—now

don’t get dizzy—after her

 

comes a man stumbling

through the butterfly ceiling

 

of the 1/72 scale vacuform model—

Into the screech, into the sodium—

 

Into the air where it is thin & waif-like.

This area aligns with column 61.

 

It rises up the spinal ridge of the continent

like lace

 

imprinted in the casement

windows of a high-school gymnasium

 

between the propellers, propane leaks & bank vault seams

in the walls of the First Class pressurized cabin, where

 

she, he, you, I are no bigger

than snow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jasmine Dreame Wagner’s poems have previously appeared or are forthcoming in New American Writing, American Letters & Commentary, Aufgabe, Verse, Blackbird and Colorado Review.  A graduate of Columbia University and the University of Montana, she has received residencies and grants from the Hall Farm Center for Arts & Education, Kultuuritehas Polymer, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.  Jasmine lives in Connecticut where she teaches creative writing at Western Connecticut State University and performs folk and experimental music as Cabinet of Natural Curiosities.